flying to nowhere is better than somewhere
by a.k.a.-ashley
Summary: She can feel it deep in her bones the way distance is slowly changing them. The way his letters have become less frequent, bordering on nonexistent, the way he doesn’t ask about her job or the new life she’s making for herself. LP


**flying to nowhere is better than somewhere**

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They graduate on a Thursday night.

The gym is filled with rows upon rows of white fold-out chairs, and parents with flashing cameras, and girls in their caps and gowns with mascara running down their perfectly made up cheeks crying over what they're leaving behind.

Peyton stays close to Lucas, her hand firmly in his and tries to soak it all in. She tries to remember Friday nights, basketball games and pompoms, the first time she ever watched him play on this floor, knowing he was going to make it. She looks up at him and she can tell he's remembering the same things.

Two hours later when every last name has been called, she's throwing her cap into the air when she feels his arms around her waist, and he's kissing her and it tastes like a promise, like forever or something like it.

_I_

They spend the summer together.

There are long afternoons spent in her bedroom, sprawled out on their backs, their bodies barely touching while a slow vinyl spins on her record player. Sometimes they talk about random things, sometimes it's a book he's reading that he thinks she'll love, or she'll ramble on about a new EP she picked up at the record store.

They don't ever talk about college, or the fact that in two months he's leaving her behind to study literature at UNC.

Sometimes they drive down to the beach after the sun goes down, shedding their clothes on the sand and wading out into the pitch black water, her arms wrapped around his neck, the cicadas buzzing loudly on the shore. He holds her close while she stares up at the stars blanketed across the sky.

There's the film festival in June with five nights of Elvis Presley, Blue Hawaii, and Viva Las Vegas, her fingers sticky from melting candies; and the fourth of July at the River Court, the top down on her old Comet, fireworks exploding over the water while they watch stretched out on the hood.

At the end of July they drive to Raleigh to see Ray LaMontagne play at The Brewery, on the way back to town he blows the transmission and they spend the night in the same motel they did so long ago, when she thought her dad was dead and he thought he was in love with Brooke Davis. It's different this time. There's nothing to feel guilty about when she pulls the clothes from his frame and he settles his weight on top of her and they have slow, lazy sex while the TV buzzes softly behind them.

She can't sleep afterwards, her thoughts linger on the fact that soon he'll be gone and she can't imagine what missing him will be like after everything they've gone through in the last two years. She stares for a while longer until eventually he opens his eyes and smiles a slow, stupid grin up at her.

She leans over and places a hand on the side of his cheek and says, "I love you." like it's the only truth she's ever spoken in her entire life.

_I _

Suddenly it's August and she's kissing him goodbye next to his mother's car, packed full of his belongings, his sleeping baby sister cradled in her arms.

"I'm only three hours away." He kisses her forehead. "I'll call you as soon as I'm settled in at school." There's another kiss to her forehead before he takes a deep breath and cups her face in his hands. "I love you Peyton Sawyer, I'm always going to love you."

She kisses him back, and she knows they're going to make it.

Karen comes bounding out of the house, a set of keys in her hand, and Peyton knows it's time for him to go. She kisses him one last time, her free arm pulling him in close while she tries to commit the way he smells and the way he tastes to memory, just in case.

Karen and Lucas take turns kissing Lily goodbye before climbing into the car and when they drive off he hangs his head out of the open window and holds his hand up in a semi-wave. She watches the car get smaller as it crawls out of the neighborhood, then Lily cries and when she looks back up he's gone.

_I_

Three weeks after Lucas leaves for Chapel Hill, Peyton is a flurry of activity.

She's adopted the life of a shark, fearing that if she stops moving for even a moment that she'll drown, or in her case that she'll remember that her boyfriend is no longer a five minute drive from her house and the ache low in her belly will once again rear its ugly head and she'll spend the next three days trying not to think about missing him.

It's possible that she's spent too much time watching Shark Week.

When she isn't watching mind-numbing documentaries on the terrors of the seas, she finds distraction in Tric. What was a part-time gig while she finished high school becomes a full-time job while she figures out what and the hell she wants to do with the rest of her life. Karen hired someone months ago to manage everything, someone to sit behind a desk and pay the bills and sign off on checks, but Peyton is still the heart of it all, wooing local acts and every once in a while a band that doesn't sell CD's out of the trunk of the drummers car, she designs flyers and makes sure the club is filled to capacity every weekend.

It never fails to make her heart race, standing backstage as some band plays a set that makes the hair on her arms stand at attention and her heart thump loudly in her chest. It feels real, like something important, and she can't help but think of Lucas and what she said to him that day at his uncle's garage, about finding something to believe in again. And she feels it every night.

Sometimes though, it feels hollow.

The set will end, the band gets paid, and the adrenaline that courses through her veins slowly fades when she comes home to an empty house, an empty inbox, and an automated voice that tells her that her friends are too busy with babies and classes and clothing lines to leave a message.

_I _

There has always been a sort-of open door policy at the Roe home, Peyton can't remember the last time she knocked on the front door even when the relationship she'd had with Lucas had been nothing but flirtation and missed opportunities. The policy doesn't change when Lucas leaves for school. For every night that Peyton comes home to an empty house, there's another night when Karen calls and insists that she come over for dinner.

They sit at the small kitchen table, Lily nestled snugly in her mother's arms, and they eat dinner and talk about Tric and the boy they both love in very different ways. Sometimes Lily cries and Karen walks circles around the coffee table in the living room until she calms down, and Peyton fills the sink with hot water and does the dishes. Most of the time Karen comes in halfway through the washing of the dishes and tells Peyton that guests don't wash the dishes in her home, and Peyton always smiles and keeps right on washing while Karen grabs a rag and starts to dry. It's become a comfortable routine for the two of them, and Peyton feels like they're both filling some sort of empty space in each other's life.

Some nights they sit on the back porch off Lucas' bedroom and drink coffee and talk about all things that aren't the club or the blonde-haired boy who used to spend nights on this porch typing away his life story onto a laptop perched on his knees.

Other nights they attempt to watch a movie, but Karen can never make it more than thirty minutes before she drifts to sleep and its just Peyton and Lily against a backsplash of color pulsing from the television. Peyton's a night owl, always has been, so she'll usually slip into the creaky old rocking chair and finish the movie while Lily drifts to sleep in her arms.

It all feels foreign at first, washing more than one plate at the end of dinner, having someone that isn't her boyfriend or her best friend asking how her day was, waking up the morning after a movie night on a couch that isn't hers with a blanket laid over her. She's been alone for so long that none of it feels normal, at least in the beginning.

She thinks of all the things Lucas has given her, his family is her favorite.

_I_

Save for the first week of school, when Peyton made him promise not to call so he could get settled in at school, they talk on the phone every night at the same time as he walks from the library back to his dorm.

After a few weeks pass the calls veer from who misses who more to how much he likes school, and dislikes his obnoxious roommate whose covered his side of the dorm with posters of half-naked girls and strategically placed beer bottles.

Some nights it feels like the only thing that's changed is the three-hour drive that separates them. Other nights the distance feels longer.

Eventually school begins to take a heavier toll and nightly phone calls are replaced by every other night phone calls, and those are eventually replaced by a single phone call every week while he does his laundry and the few occasional e-mails that are tossed out while he holes himself up in the library for mid-terms.

She doesn't mind at first, him allowing school to become his mistress, as long it's the only one. She's busy herself, or at least trying to be. But she misses talking to him, misses hearing about the mundane details of his life at school, but mostly she just misses him.

And just when she's lulled into a fit of self-pity the first letter comes. Nestled in her mailbox, tucked between bills and her new issue of Blender is a long, white envelope with her name scrawled in familiar handwriting across the front.

They come every week. Pages of college-ruled notebook paper folded into thirds, every line filled with his distinctive print. She keeps them all tucked away in a box near her record collection.

She knows that he's sent letters to another girl, but it doesn't bother Peyton. She's the only one getting them now.

_I _

She keeps a desk calendar near her computer, and on it she marks a thick black "X" through each passing day and counts down the days until Lucas comes home for Thanksgiving.

There's a fresh mark through November 12th when she gets a package in the mail from her father. In it is one plane ticket to Gulfport, Mississippi and a request that she flies down and spend the holiday with him while he docks for a week.

She's furious at first, and briefly considers calling her dad and telling him exactly where he can put his plane ticket, and his misplaced sense of entitlement. She spends days fuming at the fact that her dad has missed the last three Thanksgivings, a Christmas, two stalker attacks, and a high school graduation. And she's played the part of the understanding daughter for as long as she can remember, because he was the only parent she had left, but this request pushes all of her feelings of abandonment and resentment to the surface.

She talks to Lucas days before she's supposed to leave, and curses her father's name and rants for an hour about how unfair it is for him to request this time when she's already planned on spending Thanksgiving with him and his family. When she finally gets tired of her one-sided conversation she asks him what he thinks.

"Peyton, I love you and I can see your side on this, but take it from a guy who was abandoned by his real father and orphaned by the man he considered his father. Your dad wants to see you, he loves you and he makes sure that you know that he loves you. You've got it pretty good kid, and besides we'll have plenty of Thanksgivings to spend together. So go see your dad."

After a phone call to Karen, begrudgingly turning down her invitation to Thanksgiving dinner, she finds herself on a plane headed to the Mississippi coast.

She spends four days trapped in a small motel room with her dad while heavy rains flood the parking lot and the entire first floor of their building. She tries to maintain some sort of grudge against her dad for the entire first day, but then he calls her "Sweet pea" like he used to when she was a girl and tells her that he misses her and she starts to soften. They spend the next few days watching old movies and playing cards with a deck that's missing a Queen. It feels like it always does, like he was never gone.

When the rain lets up just in time for Thanksgiving they manage their way around kiddie-pool sized puddles in the front of their motel and wind up at the only open restaurant within walking distance. Fried chicken and bread pudding replace turkey and pumpkin pie, and it's the best Thanksgiving she's had in years.

She flies back to Tree Hill a day later and he stands at the gate and kisses her forehead when its time for her to board. This time it's him watching her leave, but it still hurts the same.

_I_

By the time Christmas break happens upon them it has been three and a half months since they have seen each other. It takes her a few days to realize that the fluttering in her stomach is actually nerves. And realizing that she's nervous to see him succeeds in making her feel a little foolish and even more nervous.

When he shows up at her door, two days earlier than she'd expected, the nerves vanish and it mostly feels like he's away for a long weekend, or that one time when he moved away with Keith for a total of fifteen minutes.

She takes in the freshly cut hair and the light scruff that graces his cheeks, and decides that maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Then she pulls him into the house by the collar of his shirt and they pretty much have sex in the front hallway.

It's not literally the front hallway, more like the couch in the living room off the front hallway, but it still feels frantic and urgent the way they peel each other's clothes off and the way he pushes into her with his face buried in her neck. The only thing she can manage to say is "God I missed you." in sharp, halted breaths.

They lay on the couch afterwards, a blanket draped loosely over their bare skin, breath still heavy from too much activity, and Peyton knows their dynamic has changed. Slow and gentle is replaced by fast and urgent, both of them knowing it's not long before he'll be gone again.

Three weeks later he is gone again.

Peyton stands with Karen and Lily, a stuffed Tar Heel mascot from her big brother held tightly in her tiny hands, and the three girls take turns hugging him goodbye while his roommate waits impatiently behind the wheel of his car.

He kisses her quick on the lips, then hesitates before coming back and kissing her slow and soft in a way that makes her cheeks flush red knowing that Karen is looking their way. He whispers into her ear and then he's gone.

Three weeks isn't as long as she'd hoped.

_I _

Two months after Lucas leaves for the second time Peyton starts to get restless in the small town abandoned by her friends in search of bigger pursuits. She decides that what she might need is a little direction, and maybe a change of scenery.

She spends the next few weeks researching art schools along the coast, absentmindedly skipping the school in Savannah, all the while her empty and abandoned sketchbooks mock her from their permanent residence on her desk. It's been months since she's drawn anything, much less anything worthy of getting her accepted into a serious art program. Eventually she stops focusing on an art school, and instead tries to focus solely on her art.

She takes to staring at the empty sketchbooks, hoping she might be filled with a random burst of inspiration. But it never comes. She buys new pens, new sketchpads, new charcoal pencils, but it never comes.

What does come is an opportunity in a different direction.

She spends her usual Tuesday afternoon in the record store, browsing bins of records she's flipped through hundreds of times, and stocking up on hard to find imports that stay tucked behind the counter reserved exclusively for her.

When she drops her stack of records onto the counter, Max reaches beneath the register and comes back with a slip of paper that he slides over towards her. As he punches numbers into the register he explains that a friend of his works at a small label in Los Angeles and they're looking for interns for the upcoming year.

She stares at the form on the counter. She doesn't know if this is what she wants, to give up on art, to be separated from Lucas by an entire country, to move her entire life to a place she's only seen in movies.

"Peyton, you've been coming in here since you were ten years old. You know every album, every band, every bootleg import. This is a great opportunity for you, just think about it, huh?" He tucks the paper into her bag and slides across the counter.

She spends a few days considering her options, before filling out the application and mailing it away before giving herself the chance to back out.

Two months later a thick white envelope with Ventura Records embossed on the front shows up in her mailbox, long after she's forgotten about applying.

A week after Lucas comes home for the summer, he drives her to the airport and she kisses him on the curb of the loading zone. She won't say goodbye, she can barely look him in the eye as she picks up her bags and slings them over her shoulders.

"We're gonna be ok, right?"

"Yeah, we're gonna be fine." He reaches up his hands and tucks her hair behind both ears, and kisses her again on the lips. "We're gonna be fine."

_I_

She's been in Venice, for almost a month and she's still trying to get used to the pace, and the traffic, the unfamiliar faces, and the thick layer of smog that hangs low over the city every single day. But Venice is everything she's ever wanted, the community's eclectic, the boardwalk is full of record shops straight out of High Fidelity, and the art community is thriving. She feels strangely at home, even though it's nothing like the home she left.

She makes fast friends with the other new intern, Abby, a girl with fire engine red hair, and a record collection that rivals Peyton's. They decide to room together early on, in a tiny apartment above an Italian deli, twelve blocks from the boardwalk on Venice Beach.

The place is nothing special. The faucet leaks, the walls need new paint, and their next-door neighbor is teaching himself how to play guitar, and his fumbling of chords floats loudly through the paper-thin walls. But the deli below them makes a hell of a sandwich, and Peyton has finally has a partner to browse the bins with at the record store a block from their apartment, and there's so much potential floating in the air.

_I_

Peyton's been at work for three weeks and she's already learned more than she ever thought possible. She knows that the line at The Coffee Bean down the block from her office has an unruly line at around 7:30 am, she knows that her boss Hank like his cappuccino dry and extra hot, and that sometime the copy machine near the break room jams midway through three dozen copies.

It's pretty much the life she'd expected as an intern, a personal slave with slightly better pay, but every once in a while there's a glimpse of something better.

The first time she's pulled into a meeting with the label's president and an A&R rep, it's three months after she started, and three minutes after she's back from the sandwich shop around the corner with an arm full of hoagies.

She's instructed to sit in the back and keep quiet, and that's exactly what she does. She spends the entire meeting scribbling furiously into a notebook while the A&R rep, Smith, plays a handful of demos until the boss finds something he likes, and when he does the room launches into high speed. Deals are being discussed, and Hank starts talking at rapid-fire pace about song choices and promotions and money.

It's exciting, and Peyton catches herself staring slack-jawed at the entire process, her pulse thumping loudly in her ears.

Abby takes her out to dinner to celebrate being the first of the interns to sit in on a meeting. Peyton excitedly recounts her entire afternoon around mouthfuls of a double-double and fries.

She calls Lucas that night, her body still buzzing from the day. She messes up the time difference again, and when he answers his phone she knows she's woken him up.

She wants to let him get back to sleep, but he insists that she talk about her day. When she finishes she can almost hear the sleepy, half-smile that forms on his face when he says he's proud of her.

She doesn't notice it at first, the way the ache low in her belly, that followed her for the year Lucas was away, begins to fade. She feels guilty at first, for not missing him during her every waking moment, but eventually that too fades away.

_I_

Seven months into her internship she finds herself shadowing an A&R Rep inexplicably named Smith. He mostly ignores her, sometime forgetting she's around until he bumps into her or has a sudden need for coffee. Peyton doesn't mind being ignored. She just concentrates on absorbing everything, going through a notepad after notepad filled with every bit of information she thinks she might need.

Eventually Smith starts to refer to her by name, and spends his free time testing her knowledge of music. If he's impressed by her ability to chronologically order the entire Beatle's catalogue he doesn't show it, at least not at first.

Ventura Records is a small, independent label, and to stay afloat in a sea of corporate labels with bottomless pockets Ventura has to do something the other labels don't, sort through stacks of unsolicited demo tapes sent in from every garage band and solo act in the country, each one thinking they have something special.

When Smith dumps a box of tapes on her desk late Thursday afternoon she knows she won't be making her flight back to North Carolina for the weekend.

"I need you to sort through these demos. The crap you can throw away, anything with something resembling potential or actual talent can be labeled and stuck on my desk. I have to meet a songwriter in San Francisco this weekend, so I need you to have this done by Monday."

"Why me?"

"Because I think you might have some potential as a talent scout, impress me and you might have a future at this label."

When she calls to tell Lucas she won't be meeting him in Tree Hill, eleven hours before she's supposed to catch her flight, he doesn't try to mask the disappointment in his voice. He won't come right out and say it, but she knows he's not happy with the situation, with her work getting in the way of them seeing each other for the first time since she left for L.A. But Peyton knows what this means for her, and she won't give it up.

She spends most of her weekend listening to the box of demos, waiting for that diamond in the rough to expose itself amongst the piles and piles of crap she's had to wade through.

By Sunday night the trashcan near her cubicle holds nearly all of the demos, save for the three tapes that she labels and slips onto Smith's desk.

When Smith calls her into his office the next morning she already has his half-caf, triple foam vanilla latte burning the inside of her palm.

"What did you pick?" He asks while motioning her to sit in the chair across from her desk.

"The first artist is strictly acoustic, mostly folk-inspired songs, Iron & Wine type of stuff. The lyrics were impressive. His voice is soft and unassuming, blends really well with his guitar style. Some of the songs tended to drift away, which is probably due to the lack of rhythm, but it's an otherwise solid demo." She rambles everything in a self-assured, matter-of-fact type of voice, trying to convince herself and Smith that she knows exactly what she's talking about.

He nods, scribbles something onto his legal pad and motions for her to continue.

"Second demo was a band, female lead singer, all male band. Her voice was unreal, kind of subtle and haunting. The demo was very strong, good song choices; the backup vocals need a little polish. There was some really nice work with a strings section on a few songs. This feels like an album that you discover on accident and then force all your friends to listen to."

"Third demo has the most potential. Everything works well, vocals, lyrics, instrumentals. They have a good sound, unlike anything that's out in the music scene right now. It's an upbeat sound, a lot of guitar and drums, but it doesn't feel light or phony like so much of the crap on the radio. I listened to this demo three times through on Sunday. I came to L.A. to hear music like this. You should hear them."

"I've already heard them." He says looking up from his notepad. "I've already listened to the box you sorted through, and picked the tapes I liked. I just wanted to see how good you were at spotting potential."

"So how did I do?" She's pissed that he played her, pissed that she had to miss her weekend with her boyfriend because of some stupid game, and mostly pissed that Lucas has been giving her the silent treatment since Thursday night because she put her job before him.

"Three out of three." He checks his watch. "Turkey on rye for lunch, just leave it in my office. I'll be in a meeting by the time you get back." She's fuming now as she gathers her notepad and heads out of his office.

"Oh, Peyton?" He calls after her, and she turns on her heel half expecting him to say he wants ham instead of turkey. "Nice work."

It's the first compliment she's gotten since she started her internship, and she suddenly feels like there will eventually be an end to sandwich duty and coffee runs. She feels like she really might have a chance here.

_I_

She's in the middle of cooking a dinner that involves a packet of fake, powered cheese when she hears a knock at her front door.

"Abby, next time you forget your keys I'm going to kick your ass." She swings the door wide open and comes face to face with someone who isn't her roommate.

"A little violent isn't it, kicking someone's ass over forgotten keys?"

"Lucas?"

"Hi."

She lunges forward, wrapping her arms around his neck and taking in the familiar smell of his soap.

They don't talk about the week before, her missed flight and his silent treatment. In part because she doesn't know what to say, she doesn't want to apologize because it wasn't her fault, and she doesn't want to bring it up even casually because it feels like an argument not so patiently waiting to happen.

"How's Lily?" She asks, while they pick at lukewarm macaroni and cheese spooned into bowls that don't match.

"She's a terror." He laughs gently. "I think I liked her better when she couldn't walk and talk."

"You love her." She says with a sly smile.

"I do."

She doesn't ask about Haley or Nathan or little baby James, who is no longer quite so little. Haley sends her e-mails every week with an attachment full of pictures of James doing the most mundane things Peyton has ever seen. She's seen James' first step, and James' first solid food, James' first pair of Jordan's, James' first basketball, James asleep on Nathan's chest. She can't imagine that life, but Haley cherishes it.

He asks about Brooke, not because he's interested. He's only trying to pull the conversation out of the awkward lull it's suddenly acquired.

"I really don't know how Brooke is." She admits somewhat sheepishly. "The calls and e-mails just gradually stopped coming after she left for New York. Distance, I guess."

She wasn't bothered by distance finally ending her friendship with Brooke, it felt like something that was bound to happen eventually, like being stuck in Tree Hill was the only thing keeping them together after everything that had happened. But the idea bothers her that distance might be too much to overcome in a relationship.

They sleep together that night, after Abby comes home to their guest and winks at Peyton before announcing that she's sleeping at her boyfriends for the night. They lay in bed afterwards, the stereo playing softly in the background, and their clothes in small piles around her bed.

She can feel it deep in her bones; the way distance is slowly changing them. The way his letters have become less frequent, bordering on non-existent, the way he doesn't ask about her job or the new life she's making for herself. The way her heart doesn't ache for him the way it used to for so long.

They're changing, and she wonders how desperately either one of them is willing to cling to what's left of them.

_I_

She's labeling a stack of files piled into her tiny cubicle when a secretary from the second floor tells her that Hank would like to see her in his office. It's the first time she's been called into the boss' office during her year at the label, and on the very long walk to his office she has an irrational fear that she's going to be fired.

Hank doesn't fire her; instead he offers her a full-time position at the label, a junior A&R rep under Smith.

For a long while she can't speak, and her heart is pumping so loud that she's sure that Hank can hear it all the way across his big mahogany desk.

She thinks of Lucas, and Tree Hill and the feeling of euphoria starts to slip away. She asks Hank if she can think about it, and he tells her that she is the first intern in five years to be offered a position that isn't a slightly better paying version of what she does now.

"Do you really need to think about it?"

She doesn't need to think about it, and soon she's shaking Hank's hand and he smiles at her and says, "Welcome to Ventura Records, Ms. Sawyer."

_I_

Peyton's on a red eye bound for North Carolina that same night. Her body is still buzzing from the excitement of the day and the celebratory bottle of champagne that she and Abby had downed hours earlier.

She doesn't get much sleep on the long flight, instead occupying her time by flipping through the same issue of Rolling Stone until the pages start to curl and she's memorized entire sections of the eight-page article on the steady decline of the music industry. When she tires of the magazine she flips off the overhead light and stares out of the pitch black window and tries to imagine how she's going to tell her boyfriend that she isn't coming home after all.

It's four in the morning by the time her plane finally touches down on familiar soil. It's her favorite time of day, that brilliant calm in the air just before the sun begins to peek over the horizon. She breathes in the humid, recognizable air before sliding into the back of a cab and heading towards home.

Lucas is back home for the summer, so she slips through the always-open back door to his bedroom and finds him sprawled out on top of his bed. His bare chest rises and falls with the gentle breath of sleep. She kicks off her shoes and locks both doors to his bedroom before slipping into bed next to him, gently trailing her fingertips down his sternum.

When he doesn't wake at her gentle touch she uses other, less conservative, means to force him awake. It starts with kisses along the hollow of his neck and concludes with her hand slipping slowly beneath the waistband of his boxer shorts and a sharp intake of breath between his teeth, before his eyes shoot open and take in the sight of her shadowed figure.

He opens his mouth to ask a question but she presses her lips to his and mumbles something into his mouth that sounds like 'surprise'. Then his body is awake and he's pulling her down onto him and she's biting down onto his shoulder to stifle a moan that could wake the rest of the house.

She wakes in the morning to the bright summer sun streaking into his bedroom through the glass panes of his door. She rolls onto her back and stretches her limbs to relieve the enjoyable soreness in her muscles from their early morning activities.

Lucas is leaning against his headboard so engrossed in Steinbeck that she has to pull the book from his hands to gain his attention. He looks down at her and smiles before tracing her collarbone with his mouth.

"Best surprise ever." He says after peeling his mouth from her still-flushed skin.

"I like to think so." She smiles.

"How long do we have?"

"Five days." She stops short of telling about what she's going back to in five days, not wanting to ruin the perfection of the last five hours. "Where's your mom?"

"She's at the café with Lily."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

_I _

Lucas and Peyton break up the day before she's supposed to fly back to Los Angeles.

She takes him to the river court and they spend the morning shooting around aimlessly, breaking only for water and making out on top of the picnic table near the court's edge. The afternoon sun slides high overhead and she can't keep it a secret for much longer. So she tells him right then, about the job, and staying in L.A. permanently. When she finishes, the silence that surrounds them is deafening.

And then the fighting starts.

The whole thing escalates quickly, and eventually they're shouting at each other in the middle of the court. Lucas angrily admits what Peyton has suspected all along, he wants her home, but she won't give this up for him.

Somewhere along the way Peyton starts to cry, and that only makes it worse because she doesn't want to be that girl. He stops his angry pacing long enough to try and console her, but she knows it's too late for them when she wraps his arms around her and it feels different, he feels different.

She spends one last night on Karen's couch, sneaking into his room when the lights are turned off. They don't talk about the day. She just slips out of her clothes one last time and crawls into bed next to him.

When morning comes, she's already gone.

_I _

It takes Peyton months to stop feeling guilty every time she gives the new intern her lunch order. She looks at the unmasked eagerness in the young girl's face and can't help but see herself staring back.

She and Abby like to take their lunch breaks on the roof of the converted warehouse that now houses Ventura Records. They eat lunch with their feet propped up on the edge of the building and watch the city buzz around them.

They finish lunch early and Abby pulls out her notebook and works on their pro/con list to determine whether or not they should find a new apartment. This is Abby's way of dealing with everything, can't decide what to eat for dinner, make a pro/con list. Can't decide whether or not to stop smoking? Pro/con list. It's become a staple in their tiny little apartment, to find the walls littered with slips of paper split in half by permanent marker. Peyton has learned to love her quirks.

The Italian deli closed down over the summer and was quickly replaced by some yuppie vegan health food store. Abby swears she can smell the wheat grass shots through the air vents.

Their list of reasons to stay is always longer than the list of reasons to move. The Chinese restaurant across the street, the record store a block over, and an absolute lack of desire to find another place are then enough reasons for Peyton to want to stay. The truth is they're both making enough money to find a nicer apartment, one that doesn't have a leaky faucet and a constant lack of hot water, but Peyton can't imagine living anywhere else.

Abby admits that she's gotten used to the smell of shredded lawn anyway, and it's not all that bad. She tosses the book aside and announces that she has a date with the barista she's been staking out at The Coffee Bean.

"You should come out with us Peyt, his best friend is single and very cute."

"No, that's alright. You go have fun, I'm probably going to work late tonight anyway."

"It's been three months Peyton." Abby looks over at her friend with genuine concern flickering behind her gray eyes. "Moving on doesn't mean you loved Lucas any less."

"I know." She lies. "I'm just not ready yet."

She takes one last glance over the city and tries not to acknowledge the fact that Abby is right.

_I _

Peyton turns 21 the day after she finds out that Lucas is dating someone that isn't her.

Abby takes her out to a bar where the music is too loud, and the people too fake. She spends the entire night sitting at the bar with her roommate, drinking shots of cheap tequila.

She wakes the next morning with a hangover and no recollection of how she made it home. She pads out to the kitchen and finds Abby waiting with coffee and a handful of aspirin.

"How are you feeling Jose Cuervo?"

"Like an idiot."

"So you drank too much on your 21st birthday, everybody does."

"I drank too much over a boy."

"We've all been there too."

She spends the rest of the day in bed, a pillow folded around her head, trying to resist the urge to throw up the contents of her nearly empty stomach. She can't help but think of Lucas and what their life would have been like if she'd never come to L.A., if there wasn't another girl taking her place.

Although she's never admitted it to anyone, she used to think they'd get married, some day far in the future when their lives were both settled. He'd write and she'd run a small label. They'd live in a comfortable house and sleep late on the weekends, making love while the early afternoon snuck in through the windows.

The fantasies were so embarrassingly not Peyton that she hadn't imagined how bad it would hurt to lose them. The realization that this will never be her life is overwhelming, and has been for the last four months, but somewhere between half a bottle of tequila and half a bottle of aspirin she realizes that she can't spend anymore time waiting for him. She won't do that again.

It takes her a few hours to pack her Lucas box. His old t-shirts, pictures of them over the years, and the bundles of letters he'd sent her over the first year they were apart are all placed carefully in a box. She slides the box into the farthest corner of her closet and drops a stack of blankets on top. Out of sight, out of mind.

She looks around the room, takes a deep breath and knows that she's going to be ok.

_I_

She meets him at a show three weeks after her minor life epiphany.

To call it a show is an overstatement. She's watching a piece of crap band play a set in the back of a bar called The Grotto. The band is mind-numbingly awful, but Peyton has to stick around to tell the band's 'manager' that Ventura Records will not be offering the Blood Monkeys a label audition.

"They suck, huh?"

She turns around to see a very cute bartender peering over her head towards the makeshift stage.

"I think you're being too nice." She hollers back, her voice being drowned out by the ongoing drum solo.

"It's my cousin's band." He says as the music dies down.

"Oh, sorry."

"No, don't be. He told me he only started it to get chicks."

"How's that working out for him?"

"I'm pretty sure he's still a virgin." Peyton laughs into her cocktail glass, and turns her back towards the band. He reaches his hand across the bar and shakes her hand. "I'm Dylan."

"Peyton."

She sticks around the bar long after the Blood Monkeys have finished their set. The band had stalked out into the night, dragging their second hand guitar cases with them after Peyton informed their manager/ the drummer's uncle that they weren't exactly what Ventura records was looking for.

Dylan pours her another whiskey on the house, and she sits at the bar and watches him mix drinks while they talk about nothing at length. It feels easy, and new. It surprises her.

Last call comes and he's suddenly swamped by drink orders. She leaves a twenty under her empty glass to settle her bill, but before she can leave she feels a hand on hers.

"I might be misreading this whole night, but would you want to go get coffee sometime?"

"Coffee would be great." She says without thinking about Lucas. She leaves her business card behind, the bold, black in loudly proclaiming the job title she earned, then heads out into the cool California air with her head still buzzing from the whiskey and new potential.

_I_

She doesn't really expect to hear from him, knowing that in L.A. the pursuit is more fun than the end result. But he calls her the following afternoon, and before she can think of a reason to say no she's on the back of his motorcycle. They ride down the coast, her arms wrapped tightly around his mid-section, and blond curls kicking up beneath the borrowed helmet.

They drink coffee on the beach and talk about her job and his job, about his short-lived career as a pro surfer and how he's saving money to move to Australia and teach at some surf school. He's cute, and funny, and nice to be around. Halfway through her Americano she realizes that she wants to kiss him, and she doesn't feel guilty, or think about Lucas and his new girl. She just leans over and kisses him softly on the lips.

He kisses back, head titled, his hand on the back of her neck pulling her closer. It's the best kind of first kiss, the one that seems to last forever, making heartbeats race in perfect sync, flushing cheeks with the gentle hum of something new.

When he pulls away he grins at her with swollen lips and asks her if this means he gets a second date.

_I_

Time passes quickly with the start of something new. Before she realizes it three months have passed and Dylan knows her like only a few men before him have.

She's mapped the tanned skin on his chest, traced the outline of the sacred heart tattoo on his shoulder with the gentle drag of her fingertips, kissed along the trail of a jagged scar near his hip, leftover from a run-in with coral reef during his days as a surfer.

They don't make any promises; there are no declarations of love, whispered or otherwise. They know this relationship comes with an expiration date, another country that will eventually pull him away. It's safer for her this way.

She won't fall in love with him.

_I_

On the nights he doesn't tend bar she drags him along to smoky clubs and they listen to unsigned bands, a handful of business cards tucked into her handbag just in case. Peyton tries to think about work while his body sways behind her, hands gripping her waist.

_I_

Haley graduates from college a year early, to the surprise of no one. Peyton finds the announcement buried between bills and junk mail, the small card embossed with metallic foil a perfect shade of Duke blue. A small slip of paper falls from the envelope, a party invitation with Haley's neat cursive politely begging her friend to make an appearance.

Three weeks pass and she's back in North Carolina, wandering the backyard barbeque with a cocktail glass in one hand and James Scott perched on her opposite hip. Like the other Scott boys before him, the littlest Scott has grown fond of the girl who has spent the last two nights sleeping on his parent's couch and drawing cartoon characters on his napkin at breakfast.

She sips from her glass and adjusts the boy on her hip, scanning the backyard for familiar faces and then she sees him. A flash of sandy blonde hair and his boisterous laugh cut through the humid summer air, and she doesn't know how to feel.

She catches his eye and there is a brief hesitation on his part before he makes his way towards her. She sets down James, and by the time she rights herself Lucas is standing before her.

Awkward pleasantries are exchanged, and for the first time since she met him she has no clue what to say to him. Everything is different.

"I've missed you." He finally says, and it feels like she's been waiting months to hear it. And now that it's out there, exposed to the world, it feels too late.

"I've missed you too." She says, because she has.

"After you left I must have started a dozen letters to you, dialed your phone number just as many times. The way things ended between us, trying to make you give up your dreams for me, I regret that every day. I regret letting you go even more."

He reaches out his hand and gently takes hold of hers. Someone is going to get hurt.

"I miss you." He says again, and this there is no past tense in his words.

She thinks there must be hundreds of songs written about a moment like this, when everything feels so full of hope, the lost love returns and the happy ending will come just as the music swells, the hero gets his girl. But this isn't their song.

"Lucas, there's someone else." She watches his face fall, and the motion seems familiar. She wonders if her face had fallen that same way when he'd told her about Brooke (all three times), or when Haley had told her about the nameless, now ex-girlfriend.

She wants to say something, to make this better for him, but she knows all to well that nothing will, so she says nothing.

James is tugging on her hand, pulling her away from the moment and when she looks back his still frame is eventually absorbed into a group of people, ice cubes tinkling in their cocktail glasses, unaware of what has come to an end before them.

_I_

It takes her ten months to get a band she's discovered pushed through to an audition, and eventually signed with the label. She's surprised at the approval; she almost doesn't recognize any motion from her bosses that doesn't involve shaking heads and blunt rejection.

She feels everything start to click into place as the meeting empties out around her until she's left sitting alone at the conference table. The feeling that she's made it washes over her, cleansing her soul of the doubt that has quietly plagued her since she left Tree Hill. This place finally feels like a home, and this job feels like a career, and her life feels like it's finally moving forward and for once she's not afraid of the destination.

When she looks at Dylan that night, feet propped up on the coffee table, completely absorbed in the rented movie playing on her television, she feels that familiar beat in her heart, the one that's hurt her before, the one that might hurt her again.

"I love you." She says.

And she really, really wants it to be true.

_I_

Australia has a date.

In four months he will pack what he can into the three suitcases he owns and fly halfway around the world, and a world away from her. She thinks the only thing worse than watching him go will be if he asks her to go with.

The lease on his apartment runs out at the end of the month, and it feels like natural progression when he moves into Peyton's apartment for the remainder of the time he has left. She convinces herself that it just makes sense for him financially. Abby doesn't mind the extra company, or the fact that there is finally someone in the apartment who knows how to use an appliance other than the microwave.

_I_

She's woken up next to men before, boys really, but when morning came they would slip away to their own beds or sometimes a different city. It's a different feeling now, sharing her bed, her home.

He sleeps close to her, hand tangled in her blond hair, a heavy arm slung over her bare midsection. He sleeps like he's wrapped up in her. Sometimes she catches herself thinking about what Australia would be like.

_I_

Lucas graduates from college. He doesn't send her an announcement.

She hears the news from Haley. She thinks about sending him something, a card maybe. She's still proud of him, of what he's accomplished, no matter what happened between them.

Then she remembers his face the last time they spoke, and decides against sending anything.

_I_

There is an empty brown box on her desk, and a note telling her to see the boss when she gets into work after a long weekend.

She's fired before the first coffee run.

The boss says she's being laid off, but Peyton never did like sugarcoating. She loses focus as he rants on about the so-called digital revolution, and declining CD sales being the eventual end to the music industry she's come to know. He slides a severance check across the desk, and she leaves to pack her brown box.

She wanders the city for hours after she leaves, listening to the noise, tasting the thick L.A. smog in the back of her throat, and trying to figure out how she is supposed to feel.

She winds up at a coffee house just off Sunset Boulevard. There's a guy with an out of tune guitar taking advantage of the open mic, Peyton drinks her iced coffee on the patio. She's not in the mood for music.

Across the street is an art supply store and it catches Peyton's eye immediately. She abandons her coffee and the box full of things she no longer wants, and feels that familiar fire of inspiration light in her again as she crosses the street.

A bell chimes above her as she opens the door. She wanders the narrow aisles, running her fingers along the bristles of paint brushes, the tips of graphite pencils leaving black smudges on the tips of her fingers.

She buys a sketchpad and the black ink pens she'd favored as a young artist. The desire to draw had abandoned her for years, and now she can feel it rushing back as the music starts to fade away.

_I_

She sends out a dozen resumes in the week following her abrupt dismissal. It's a half-hearted effort and she knows it. When no offers come, she doesn't try anymore.

She loves L.A. but L.A. won't love her back, and she won't hold onto something like that again. At the end of the month the lease will run out and she'll fly back home to North Carolina. It doesn't feel like a failure, or a wasted opportunity, like she's coming home with tail tucked between her legs.

It's just another chapter.

_I_

LAX is loud and pulsing with activity, takeoffs and arrivals, tearful goodbyes, hurried footsteps chasing after planes leaving them behind. They find their own little pocket of silence, bags at his feet, the rest of the world continuing to buzz around them. She holds tightly to the collar of his jacket, silently willing him to stay one more day, one more hour, just long enough to shiver under his touch one more time.

He cups her face with gentle hands and kisses her once, short and quick. "Come with me." He says suddenly.

"I can't." She doesn't hesitate because she knows this is the end for them, it always has been.

She thinks if there had never been a Lucas Scott in her life she would kiss his lips and say "of course" and they'd slip away from L.A., a one-way ticket to Australia tucked into her pocket.

He kisses her again; letting his lips linger just a little longer on hers before pulling away.

"I wish." She says wistfully, never quite finishing her thought because he gets it anyway.

She tells him that she loves him, because she does, and the she will never forget him, because she won't. Then she kisses him one last time, her small frame pressed entirely against him, arms wrapped tightly around his neck, soaking up every memory before he's gone forever.

They whisper promises they know they'll never keep against each other's lips, then he picks up his bags and he's gone.

_I_

Karen dies two days before Peyton is supposed to leave L.A.

She's packing the last of her suitcases, everything she can't fit goes to Abby. Haley calls her, choking out the words between big ugly sobs. A burst aneurysm during the morning rush, the kind of exit that leaves the suffering to the living. Peyton cries too, feeling the loss just the same as she did for her other mothers.

_I_

She's on a plane the next day, in a seat near the window. After takeoff she watches the city grow smaller until it eventually fades away.

There are still lights on when the cab she's in pulls up to the front curb of his house. She bypasses the front door, instead sneaking around back to the bedroom door still painted black because she's told him she liked it.

He answers the door in a wrinkled shirt and a pair of tattered jeans that have seen better days. The dark circles under his eyes put his grief on public display, and his rough cheeks are an imperfect timeline. The two-day-old stubble marking the length of time he has been without a mother.

He doesn't say anything to her, just steps out of the doorway and grabs for her like she's the only thing he has left. And maybe she is. He buries his face in the warmth of her neck, and she can feel his warm tears soak through the collar of her shirt. She wraps her arms around him and they stay frozen on the porch until he's ready to move.

It's there on that porch, holding tightly to a man crying silent tears for a loss she knows all to well that she realizes she never stopped loving him.

_I_

He buries his mom on a Sunday morning.

Summer storm clouds hang low over a small group of mourners dressed in varying shades of black. Peyton prays for the rain to hold off just a little longer.

There's a priest dressed in a richly colored gown reading from a small leather bible held in his trembling hand. Lily stands next to Peyton, her tiny hand tucked firmly into Peyton's.

Lily has cried every night since Peyton got back. Some nights it's nightmares, other times she just cries for her mom. Peyton sleeps on the sofa in his living room, and she can hear Lucas talking quietly to her, attempting to sing a lullaby. Anything to make her tears stop.

The night before the funeral Peyton tucks Lily into her princess sheets and whispers goodnight, but a hand on her arm stops her from leaving.

"Mommy used to stay with me until I fell asleep. Can you stay Peyton?"

Peyton stays.

A prayer is said, but Peyton doesn't listen. Lucas takes a palm full of fresh soil and scatters it over his mother's casket as it's lowered into the ground. He returns to his place next to her and Lily. He slips his hand into hers; his palm still caked with dirt.

She looks at the two Scott's on either side of her and thinks of street lights flashing red and her foot on the accelerator, her black converse stained crimson with blood, Psycho Derek and his sour breath hot on her skin. She thinks of all the times Lucas has saved her, and realizes it's her turn to save him.

_I_

The house is full of mourners, regulars from the café that Peyton still recognizes, Deb, Nathan and Haley. The one person Peyton can't find is Lucas.

She finds him in his mother's room, sitting on the edge of the bed still unmade since the morning she died. She sits next to him and absentmindedly pulls his hand into her lap.

"Does this ever get easier?"

"No. But eventually the sadness wears away, and the memories don't sting as much."

They sit for a few minutes, contemplating her words and the silence that has overtaken the room.

"Lily and Jamie are asleep in her room, how about a night drive to clear your head?"

He nods and she pulls him up from the bed, his arms wrapping around her as he gets to her feet. He smiles at her, the first time in days, and laces his fingers through hers before pulling her slowly out of the room.

_I_

They wind up at the River Court just as the rain starts. She parks just off the court, and cuts the lights. They listen to the rain patter off the canvas top of the Comet, and watch the drops dance haphazard patterns down the windows. It finally feels like it used to between them.

It feels natural when it happens, he leans over and kisses her and there is no stopping the inevitable. She slides across the bench seat and into his lap. Clothes are pulled from her frame, his mouth pressed to her collarbone, the windows growing fogged with their hurried breath. She feels alive again, under his touch and she knows this is where she wants to be.

"It's you Peyton. It always has been." He breathes against her flushed skin.

That night she moves from the couch, to his bedroom, to moving in completely.

_I _

Six months have passed since he buried his mother, and she buried her music career in the sandy beaches of Los Angeles.

She wakes early, before the birds have begun their morning chorus and the sun has peeked above the open window. She has an eight a.m. deadline and a half-finished strip that needs her attention, but her focus is lost on his sleeping form. She watches his chest rise and fall, and feels the heart that's failed him before beat beneath her gentle hand. She loves him, but it feels bigger now, like the realization of some plan greater than them. She knows this time it's for keeps.

He stirs awake, holding her hand tighter against the bare skin of his chest. She pulls in closer, breathing in the faint scent of his soap that has lingered with her for years. Lily needs her lunch made, and she desperately needs a cup of coffee but for now she's content laying here with him.

She feels the familiar trace of his fingers down her spine, and she knows that she is home.


End file.
